Kirts, Connor, Saarikallio, Suvi, Anderson, Cameron J., Bannister, Scott, Céspedes-Guevara, Julian, Heng, Gladys J., Henry, Noah, Jakubowski, Kelly, Koehler, Frederike, Krause, Amanda E., Lennie, Thomas, Martínez, Isabel Cecilia, O'Neill, Katherine, Warrenburg, Lindsay, and Eerola, Tuomas (2026) Measuring emotional experiences with music: Content validity assessment for episode model constructs. Music & Science, 9.

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Abstract

This study focuses on the first stage of instrument development, content validity, and provides guidance on what steps should be taken when designing and evaluating content through the development of an instrument to reflect a recent theory concerning emotional episodes. To establish this instrument, we (1) operationalized the theory, identifying 25 sub-constructs for topics such as listening attention, meaning generation, preferences, familiarity, reward, and functions attributed to the use of music to regulate affectual states; (2) proposed a set of items (N =495) to represent the relevant constructs operationalized here from the Episode Model; (3) analyzed and reduced the item pool with natural language processing (NLP); (4) assessed whether items were indeed reflective of their assumed construct and would garner appropriate responses using feedback supplied by subject matter experts; (5) refined the item pool based on expert feedback; (6) reassessed the revised items which resulted in a reduced item sample (N =168). Through this collaborative content validity process, experts supported the theoretical positioning of the Episode Model through their agreement with the operationalized constructs. Expert insight shaped the implementation of theory from loosely associated items into a more tightly interrelated set of items, comprising fewer and more distinct constructs. We conclude by discussing the purpose of these content validity processes and outline the next stages of instrument development to construct a robust instrument which contextualizes emotional episodes experienced with music.

Item ID:	90878
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2059-2043
Keywords:	Affect regulation, content validity, context, emotion, functions of music, measurement, music psychology, psychology of music, social and applied psychology of music
Copyright Information:	© The Author(s) 2026 Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Date Deposited:	07 Apr 2026 04:17
FoR Codes:	36 CREATIVE ARTS AND WRITING > 3603 Music > 360301 Music cognition @ 100%
SEO Codes:	13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1301 Arts > 130102 Music @ 50% 28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280121 Expanding knowledge in psychology @ 50%
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